Balancing Individual Flexibility with Team Effectiveness
Finding the sweet spot between employee needs and team success
Finding the sweet spot between employee needs and team success
Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are personalized work arrangements that employees negotiate with their employers. When the degree of these deals differs within a team—called i-deals differentiation (i-dealsD)—it can affect how teams function.
In their study, “I-Deals for Some Employees May (Not) Be Ideal for the Team: Positive and Negative Relationships Between I-Deals Differentiation and Team Effectiveness,” Dr. Wayne and her co-authors, Haoying (Howie) Xu, Eric J. Michel, and Jingzhou Pan, examined three common types of i-deals: flexibility, task, and career. Their research found:
• Flexibility i-dealsD (e.g., special training opportunities or unique work schedules) tended to increase relationship conflict within teams, which then reduced customer-related outcomes.
• Task i-dealsD (e.g., individualized work assignments) reduced relationship conflict, which in turn improved customer outcomes.
• Career i-dealsD showed no direct effect on outcomes.
Findings were consistent across two field studies in both the U.S. and China, using data from restaurants and service companies.
Impact for Business Practitioners
For managers and HR leaders, not all individualized arrangements are equal. Offering flexibility or career-focused i-deals unevenly within a team can fuel conflict and harm customer service, while task-based i-deals may strengthen team dynamics and boost performance. Practitioners should carefully differentiate which types of i-deals to grant, ensuring they enhance rather than undermine collaboration and customer value.
Human Resource Management is a Financial Times Top 50 journal with a 5-year impact factor of 9 and an acceptance rate of 7%. Co-authors Haoying (Howie) Xu and Eric J. Michel earned their Ph.D. at UIC.